


Construction Noise

by ElDiablito_SF



Series: Penis PJ Verse [7]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Cemeteries, Flashbacks, M/M, Seascapes, mentions of Flinthamiltons, mentions of Jackanne and Maxanne etc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-23
Updated: 2018-04-23
Packaged: 2019-04-26 17:48:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14407287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElDiablito_SF/pseuds/ElDiablito_SF
Summary: In which we learn about Silver's early college years and why Flint paints those seascapes.





	Construction Noise

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vowelinthug](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vowelinthug/gifts), [ellel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellel/gifts).



> Two jerks, alike in dignity, on fair Tumblr where I waste my time... basically Gemma and Elle made me do this so this is all their fault.
> 
> A word of CAUTION, if you please: Lord T. Ham, whom j'adore, is kind of a dick in this. His relationship with Flint will be alluded to here and as you can imagine, it didn't end well, because... well.... this is the Penis PJ Verse. If you're not okay reading about Thomas being a dick (albeit a very amusing one), then STOP (Hammer time).

The sound that Silver had hoped was just an unpleasant part of his dream that he could willfully escape repeated itself again and again with clocklike insistence. Silver let out a pathetic groan and turned within the circle of Flint’s arms, their noses colliding. Flint purred agreeably against Silver’s unshaven cheek and nuzzled against the lobe of his ear.

“What is that infernal noise?” Silver whispered, refusing to open his eyes. Perhaps if he tried hard enough, he could convince his body to return to the last dream he’d been having. It involved eating uni out of Flint’s navel, which wasn’t something he suspect his beloved would ever allow in the physical realm.

Instead of a reply, he was rewarded with Flint’s mouth seeking out his own and he parted his lips to welcome the gentle glide of Flint’s tongue as it sought cautious entrance. “Mmrph,” Flint said into the kiss, and Silver nodded in accord, allowing those freckle spattered arms to encircle him tighter.

The noise, in the meantime, had no inclination of abating, sending Silver burrowing deeper and deeper into Flint’s embrace, as their mouths lazily and languidly traded soft licks and kisses, alternating between gentle nibbles and probing swipes of tongue. He loved waking up this way. Well, not exactly _this way_ because what the actual fuck?

“Seriously, what’s with the fucking banging?” he whined against Flint’s mouth, finally blinking his eyes open.

“There’s construction next door,” Flint replied with a small yawn, lifting his own eyelids and staring at Silver with a blurry and smiling gaze. “We live in New York City, surely you’re not unfamiliar with this concept.”

“My place has soundproofing,” Silver pronounced, wrinkling his nose. “And Muldoon. Who serves me breakfast in bed.”

“And insults me,” Flint reminded him.

“Is that why you won’t spend the night more often?”

“I’m not that thin-skinned,” Flint replied, running his hand down Silver’s naked flank with the look that always made Silver’s skin ignite into a thousand sparks. “If anyone in this bed is delicate,” Flint teased, letting his thumb flick playfully against the nub of Silver’s nipple, “that would be Your Highness.”

“You know,” Silver yawned and leaned forward to nibble along Flint’s neck as he spoke, “I give up significant comforts to spend time with you in your little bohemian love shack. You could show some consideration.”

Flint laughed and slid down, lowering his mouth over Silver’s breastbone, biting into the tight muscles of his abs, licking into the soft dip of his bellybutton. “What exactly do you know about bohemian love shacks, my princeling?”

“Wow, I let you use my body as a canvas that _one_ time and you think you’re entitled to my entire backstory?” Silver snorted, eyes fixed upon the crack in Flint’s ceiling. He really needed to coax this consummate artist out of his little burrow hole.

“I wasn’t asking,” Flint murmured into Silver’s iliac furrow and then dragged his tongue along the pronounced crease until it dipped deep into the groin. “Although everyone has a story and I imagined you might tell me yours someday.”

“Will you tell me why you paint nothing but seascapes?” Silver asked, his fingers caught in Flint’s russet hair. But the next moment Flint was dragging his tongue up the underside of his cock and for a few blissful minutes, Silver lost track of his thoughts, and the noises of construction outside as well.

***

**Paris, 10 Years Earlier**

“Jack!”

“Please, it’s _Jacques_ , we’re in public!”

“I’m not gonna call you fucking _Jacques_ when we’re speaking English!” Silver scowled at his companion. “Wanker!” he added.

“You’re American,” Jack Rackham pointed out with a theatrical finger gesture, “you don’t get to say things like ‘wanker’, or ‘bloody’, or ‘bint’… or ‘bloody wanker.’”

“Do you ever actually get tired of policing how I bloody well speak?”

“You did that on purpose!” Jack gasped.

“Maybe.” Silver grabbed the flask out of his friend’s hand and took a long swig. “And we’re not in public. We’re in a fucking cemetery,” he pointed out as he gestured across the tombstone spattered expanse of Père Lachaise.

“We are before the eyes and ears of the great Bard!” Jack exclaimed, dropping to his knees before a stone sphinx.

“Now I think you’ve confused Oscar Wilde and Shakespeare,” Silver muttered, taking another swig of the warm liquor. “I cannot believe I’m getting drunk in a cemetery like some fucking goth kid. If I didn’t think that my father would absolutely not approve of this, I wouldn’t be caught dead here… Errr.” He looked around as a shiver ran up his spine. “So to speak.”

“Shut up and hand me the lipstick, my young Ganymedes.”

“Jack, I swear to fucking god.” Silver rolled his eyes so hard he almost saw Holland. Nevertheless, he reached into the inner pocket of his leather jacket and pulled out a narrow Lancôme box with the words “l’absolut rouge” on it. “Here you go, you fucking freak.”

“Feel free to kiss Oscar without lipstick then, if you’re living a life of purity beyond the shadow of vandalism.”

“I’m not gonna kiss Oscar, for fuck’s sakes.”

“You have no artist’s soul, no romantic passion!”

“And you have a little too much of it,” Silver retorted, rocking back and forth on his heels. “One would think you’re trying to give Lord Byron a run for his money with the…” he motioned towards Jack, kneeling in front of the tombstone with his mouth streaked in red. “Um… the melodrama.”

“But _not_ the incest,” Jack pointed out before prostrating himself and pressing his lips to the cold stone. “ _J'ai baisé ta bouche, Iokanaan!_ ”

“Holy shit,” Silver muttered to himself and took another long swallow from Jack’s flask. He looked away, in part to give Rackham the privacy to make as much a spectacle of himself as he needed, in part in fear because while the verity of ghosts was yet to be determined, he was fairly sure that security guards were an actual thing in France. He reached into the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out a pack of Gauloises Bleues, lighting a cigarette with his handy zippo. A shiver ran through his limbs as he took a satisfying drag and let smoke pool slowly out of his nostrils. “Besides, I’m pretty sure Anne’s your sister, and you’re totally fucking her,” he said into the night.

Rackham lay in ecstasy on the cold stone by his feet, his lipstick smeared and his eyes glazed over. “Anne…” he whispered wistfully, “is a lesbian.”

“Wow?” Silver sat down on the cold slab next to Jack and handed him his cigarette.

“Yeah.”

“So… she’s…?”

“Dating a woman named Max.”

“Really? Max?”

“That’s all you have to say?” Jack snatched back his flask and brought it to his own lips. “She is the love of my life, my _soulmate_ , and now…” He took a long drag off of Silver’s cigarette as Silver watched the glow of the cherry turn to a pillar of ash before his eyes.

“Is that what this little midnight adventure is all about?” he asked, brushing his fingers against Jack’s as he reclaimed his smoke. “Anne’s newly found lesbianism and your existential crisis?”

“ _Peut-être_ ,” Jack shrugged. “Perhaps a little existential crisis isn’t so terrible? Perhaps it is healthy to question things now and then. For example, your father, whomst you hate, was so eager to get rid of you that he agreed to send you to a prestigious institution of higher learning halfway across the world. Consequently, you do everything in your power to embarrass him, even from afar. But, have you considered? Perhaps the thing that would annoy him the most…”

“Shut up, Jack,” Silver grinned and flicked the butt of his cigarette away, desecrating some lesser known’s grave, no doubt. Jack, for once in his life, did shut up. So, Silver betook himself of the opportunity to crawl into his lap and kiss him silly.

And thus, a tradition was born.

***

**North Cornwall, later that summer**

Jack Rackham’s parents had a summer house in Cornwall, somewhere between Padstow and Newquay, so you could have a good view of the Bedruthan Steps if you were to go on a pleasure stroll. Silver was certain his father had intended to punish him when he’d told him not to come home for the summer after what the local student paper had called a “lewd display.” However, he had clearly miscalculated when the boy with whom Silver was caught _in flagrante_ on top of the tomb of Emile Zola invited Silver back home to England with him instead. In truth, Silver wasn’t exactly surprised. His father probably thought that all people, and therefore lovers, were expendable, not worth forming long-term attachments to, so he hadn’t counted on John thwarting him by becoming _friends_ with someone he’d also occasionally shared a bed with. And Rackham’s parents were incredibly liberated about such things.

“I told them Anne had gone full gay and you’re my revenge fuck,” Jack informed him after they’d settled into their respective rooms.

Silver choked. “Why… couldn’t you just tell them we’re friends?”

“Then I wouldn’t be able to do this in front of them,” Jack danced up to him and groped his ass mid-pirouette. “Or this,” he stole a quick kiss and twirled Silver around. “Well, anyways, darling, don’t be such a gigantic prude.”

“I’m not?” Silver attempted.

“All you Americans are gigantic prudes. It’s because you live in a country founded by Puritans.”

“That isn’t true?”

“Ah, but it is.”

Say what you like about the weather in England, but the Cornish coastline was well worth crossing the Channel for. Jack’s family was what some might call “old money,” although no longer at the peak of their dynasty, but with pretensions at maintaining a certain fashionable clout about them. Their house was well-appointed and fully stocked with everything to make a boy’s summer as frivolous and dangerous as possible, including matching mopeds that Silver and Jack rode down to the coast every day for a secluded smoke. When you get older, you can already see the end of summer before it ever began, but back in those youthful years the days were long and summer felt interminable. Jack recited terrible poetry which somehow managed to incorporate Silver into all kinds of lyrical and mythical compromising positions, and Silver discovered Buddhism and got heavily into meditation, much to Jack’s chagrin as this state of Zen made Silver impervious to his attempts at raillery.

They somehow managed not to kill each other even a little bit.

Every couple of days, Anne would call, and Jack would end up on the phone with her for hours, which was pretty excessive for someone you were allegedly no longer dating. On one such occasion, Silver had decided to give them their privacy, and wandered off along the seaside promenade in the direction of Padstow. Despite his best efforts at not thinking about it, summer was drawing to a close, and soon they’d be returning to Paris to begin their studies anew. And, of course, Jack being two years ahead of him, soon enough they would be saying farewell. Perhaps his father was right in some way, and there really was no point in getting emotionally attached to anyone.

He’d been so lost in his unexpected bout of melancholy that he didn’t notice that he was about to walk into someone’s poorly parked vehicle.

“Miranda, you’re making a scene!” Silver heard and quickly ducked behind the car.

“You promised me you wouldn’t let things get so out of hand!” the woman, supposedly this “Miranda,” shouted at whoever she was with. Silver peaked out to see an incredibly tall man with ash blond hair and a rather dandyish suit for that time of year. His back had been towards the vehicle and Silver could not make out his face. “This entire thing with James was supposed to be fun. A summer dalliance. A memory to keep us warm at night when we are old,” Miranda continued to berate her companion.

“And that’s what it is!”

“Thomas!”

“Darling!”

“Not to _him_!” the woman exclaimed, and Silver could see her now as her body veered closer to her companion. She had blazing brown eyes and long brown hair that would have been meticulously pinned in a bun at the top of her head, but due to some kind of exertion was clearly coming undone. “He is in love with you!”

“James is a big boy, Miranda. Big boys know that when they get involved with married men things don’t always resolve themselves in fairytale endings.”

“Oh for fuck’s sakes!” the woman was having none of this. “He’s an artist! You know how _sensitive_ those art boys are. You’ve had more than your share of them.”

“Miranda, what do you want me to do?”

“End it now, before it gets even worse, obviously.”

“Now?” the man named Thomas didn’t sound too keen on that idea. “Darling, you’ve _seen_ that man’s beautiful cock. Would you truly deprive me of a few more months of harmless fun?”

At this point, Silver fell over onto his ass and made his presence known with a rather loud bout of, “Son of a bitch!”

“Good Lord, darling!” Thomas exclaimed. “What is it about Cornwall, it just rains gorgeous men here all day long!”

Silver blushed and scrambled up to his knees, attempting to shake dirt and grass off his clothes. “Um… I’m American,” he said, as if that was going to clarify the whole thing.

“What an odd coincidence,” Miranda mused and threaded her arm through that of her companion. “Young American,” she then addressed Silver, “you don’t by any chance know how to change a tire, do you? We’re in a terrible predicament and it appears that our cell phones are out of our reception networks.”

“No, ma’am,” Silver replied meekly. “I’ve never had to change my own tires in my life. But you’re welcome to use my phone.” Somehow, he still had all his bars, which was probably some kind of a Cornish miracle.

“Who are you calling?” Thomas asked, looking over Miranda’s shoulder.

“Who do you think? There’s only one man in our lives who would know how to change the bloody tires.”

“Our buttler?”

“No, you idiot! James!”

“Um… maybe you guys should call a mechanic or something?” Silver swayed awkwardly where he stood. He certainly did not mean to get anywhere near this conjugal drama. Thomas gave him a look that could only be described as intensely queer, while Miranda ignored him completely and dialed a number into his phone.

Silver heard her say, “James? Would you be a darling?” then nothing but laughter as the wind from the sea carried her voice in the opposite direction. He really wanted to no longer be there, with these swingers and their impending love drama. Dealing with the whole Jack/Anne/Max thing had been trying enough, and he didn’t want another dose of whatever _this_ was brewing to be.

As soon as Miranda handed him his phone back, he pocketed it, and awkwardly made his excuses before turning and jogging back to the place where he hoped Jack would be close to wrapping things up with his call.

A few weeks later, when going through his phone history, he deleted the weird number that he hadn’t recognized. But by then school was about to start and they were leaving Cornwall.

***

“Your paintings remind me of the best summer I ever spent,” Silver said, burrowing into the warm embrace of Flint’s arms as they stood barefoot in the middle of his studio, sharing one steaming cup of freshly brewed coffee between them. “It’s always, different, isn’t it? The sea? You can’t ever paint the same picture twice.”

“Mmm,” Flint emitted into Silver’s curls, chasing his hum with a soft kiss. “Where did you spend the best summer of your life, pet?”

“North Cornwall,” Silver replied, leaning into the gentle pecks of Flint’s mouth against his hairline. He relished this closeness that they’d managed to develop, which was why it shook him when he felt Flint’s arms loosen around his frame. “What is it?” he turned only to watch Flint pale.

“It’s… nothing.”

“It’s not nothing. Tell me.” Silver picked Flint’s hand up with his own and pressed it to his chest.

“You asked me why I only paint seascapes?”

“I did,” Silver conceded cautiously.

“I got into painting them when I was in Cornwall.”

Silver squeezed Flint’s hand. “And? Is there more to that story?”

“I fell in love there,” Flint sighed but didn’t pull his hand away. “And I had my heart broken there. It wasn’t the best summer of my life. And I guess… I’ve been replaying the psychological trauma of it in my work ever since.”

“Oh.” Silver placed the coffee cup down onto a nearby stool. He sincerely hoped neither of them would try to sit on it later. Then he sidled up to Flint and wrapped both his arms around his neck, resting his forehead against the scratchy scruff of Flint’s beard. “Well, you’re never getting rid of me, you realize. You’ll need a fucking restraining order to get rid of me,” he said in what he hoped was his most reassuring tone.

“You’re batshit and I love you,” Flint replied, pulling him into a warm, lingering, coffee-flavored kiss. And that was by far the best thing Silver had heard all day.


End file.
